The Botanical Art Files Composition: The Design Guide for Botanical Artists Paperback – January 12, 2015

I must say this is a great book! Honestly, this is the book I have been waiting for... I find most books on botanical art will tell you how important composition is and will maybe devote one vague page to it if you're lucky, but this book gives you an insight into how it actually all works - hoorah! I would highly recommend this book to any artist who is looking for a more structured approach to the composition angle - it breaks down the process and the underlying principles, the illustrations seem to have been chosen because they demonstrate exactly this principle... beautifully laid out, easy to follow, incredibly beautiful and skillfully executed. BIG TICK! Love it, 5 stars :)

This is a great book for anyone interested in beginning their botanical illustrator's journey. The sections are quick, making the read rewarding, but full of information. A must read. This book will definitely be a continued resource for me, as I develop and practice my skills.

For content this book rates 5 stars. It is a creative, insightful, and thought-provoking read for the botanical artist and illustrator in particular but also for graphic artists of whatever subject matter. You will learn a lot from this book. For design of the book pages it comes close to a perfect 5, as well. The creative use of different positive-negative backgrounds for the text pages is generally successful, although not so the lightest gray background with white lettering which is hard to read. However, the book rates only a 2 at best for proof reading of the text, which is littered with an embarrassing quantity of misspellings, grammatical goofs and other typos of every sort.. Yet even though you may wince at every new glitch, you should persevere and read this book for its great content.

I am delighted with this beautifully illustrated and comprehensively written guide. A 'must' for aspiring and accomplished Botanical Artists alike.

As a student of botanical art and illustration, I was very excited to see a book published that deals solely with composition for this specialty. The authors are Australian botanical artists and educators who have written a book on what they term "the ten essential principles of visual design for botanical artists." Most botanical art books spend minimal time on this topic, addressing primarily the technical details of drawing in graphite, colored pencil or watercolor. In many ways this book has filled that gap. The book is well-organized and covers a wide-range of important topics. Unfortunately, there are some problems, and they are not insignificant. While the artwork is beautiful on the whole, some of it is so poorly printed that the details appear smudged or unclear, and some of the print legends are very small. Most of the problems with clarity and detail are in the representations of work in graphite (a specific example of poor legibility is the section called Working Drawings, pp18-19). Other artwork contains so little detail that by contrast it seems almost cartoonish. In some cases the artwork does not clearly demonstrate the concept under discussion or the topic is not explained clearly enough. An example is the section on the Rule of Thirds, Golden Section and Fibonacci sequence. Other sections contain confusing or contradictory material, such as the troubleshooting chart where a depiction of three pears is labeled a problem because "an even number of elements is often preferable as it can avoid an uncomfortable split." In the next row of the same chart the reader is urged to avoid an even number of elements for the same reason! There are also very significant grammatical errors throughout the book, including numerous words spelled incorrectly and many incomplete sentences. This lack of proper editing is irritating in what is obviously intended as a professional publication. In summary, while this book fills a welcome need in the botanical art community and presents a well-organized broad overview of concepts related to visual design applied to botanical art, the very poor editing and presentation of some of the artwork are very disappointing.

Awesome book!

I have read this book cover-to-cover twice so far. I find some of the concepts familiar, but I need reminding to apply these concepts tomy own Botanical Art. It is far easier to critique someone's Artwork than to evaluate and correct one's own. Other concepts werenew to me since I have not had formal Fine Arts training. Many of the tips and guidelines for Composition have not been seen in otherBotanical Art texts which makes them new and valuable for me. When I showed this book to other students in a recent BotanicalArt Workshop, 5 or 6 of the students took cell phone photos of the cover so that they could order their own copy. The typos do notdetract from the technical content of the book. Hopefully, they will publish a 2nd Edition, fix the typos, and keep writing the series.

Quite interesting. Unfortunately there are a number of typos. Of course they don't change the value of information but it's sad that there couldn't have beed a better job of editing.